Talaat is a talented football player and an NFL draft prospect. He is a graduate of Gallaudet University with a degree in physical education. Talaat, whose parents are immigrants from Egypt, is an advocate for peace in the Middle East.

He also happens to be deaf.

Talaat is coming close to fulfilling his dream of playing professional football, one made more possible by the attention Seattle Seahawks fullback Derrick Coleman generated this season with his play and a popular Duracell commercial. Coleman was not the first deaf NFL player, but he was the first to make it to the Super Bowl.

Like Coleman, Talaat has a tough road ahead of him. Talaat will likely go undrafted, but he already overcame severe-to-profound hearing loss with the help of hearing aids and he doesn’t expect it to be a problem as a professional football player.

“It does not affect my communication and interaction with people,” Talaat wrote in an email to USA TODAY Sports. “The only thing I ask is that people look me in the face if they’re talking to me. On the field we communicate with signals and from knowledge of our system calls for each opponent, so that’s a non-issue.”

By the start of first grade, Talaat was deemed fluent enough to be placed into a traditional school system.

Talaat did receive criticism and ridicule from his classmates and opponents because of his hearing loss. Talaat said there were those that would “laugh in my face.” It became the spark he needed to drive him into eventually becoming a finalist for the Gagliardi Trophy given to the outstanding player in NCAA Division III and the Cliff Harris Award, given to the defensive player of the year in either Division II, III or NAIA.

“This lit a fire inside of me unlike anything else; inside I was enraged and couldn’t wait to prove them wrong,” Talaat wrote. “This was the first of many of the same kind of experiences that I would face in pursuit of my football dreams, and the beginning of my underdog/snubbed mentality.”

Talaat’s football career began as a gangly high school freshman who couldn’t even bench press 100 pounds. Talaat eventually grew to 6-5 by his senior season, but he was only a one-year starter at West Springfield High School.

As a result, the University of Massachusetts was the only school to recruit Talaat. He accepted an opportunity to gray-shirt — a situation where the player doesn’t enroll immediately and pays his own way until they are accepted mid-year — for the Minutemen.

During that time, head coach Don Brown left UMass to become the defensive coordinator at the University of Maryland. Talaat realized the school wasn’t a fit for him.

UMass prevented Talaat from transferring to several other Football Championship Subdivision schools that had shown interest, so he went to Northern Virginia Community College for a year and worked in the stock room of a local T.J. Maxx. At that point, parents of former high school told him he’d never amount to anything and labeled him a quitter, he said.

“Nobody wanted to hear my side of the story,” Talaat wrote. “The entire time, I didn’t give up hope. I kept believing, kept my head down and kept working hard and stayed focused on my goal of making it to the NFL.”

Talaat eventually found his way to Gallaudet University, a school in Washington D.C. that, according to the school’s website, is the world’s only university with programs and services specifically designed to accommodate deaf and hard-of-hearing students. Talaat was initially contacted by one of the team’s assistant coaches, who was also recruiting one of his former teammates.

In three seasons with the Bison, Talaat registered 123 tackles, 32.5 tackles for loss, 16 sacks and six forced fumbles. He also played both ways, starting at offensive guard and defensive end, during certain games.

Talaat’s size and play eventually caught the attention of the NFL. Scouts from 25 different teams visited the school during the season. The Indianapolis Colts, Oakland Raiders, San Diego Chargers, Seattle Seahawks and Washington Redskins attended Gallaudet’s pro day, the first in the school’s history.

Talaat measured in at 6-6 and 271 pounds with 33 5/8-inch arms, according to a press release from the school. He ran a 4.94-second 40-yard dash. His 4.43-second 20-yard shuttle would have tied time with the No. 1 overall prospect in May’s NFL draft class, South Carolina DE Jadeveon Clowney. Talaat’s 7.28-second 3-cone drills was only .01 slower than Clowney’s.

Talaat’s overall performance and size are reminiscent of Steelers DE Brett Keisel when he came into the league in 2002.

Despite the interest during the season and at the pro day, Talaat hasn’t made any pre-draft visits. However, Talaat believes teams aren’t concerned with his hearing loss.

“Every scout that I spoke with over the past year has been able to see that my hearing isn’t any issue,” Talaat wrote. “I spoke verbally and conversed with them to assuage any doubts they may have had. As far as playing on the field, an important thing to realize is that NFL stadiums are very loud. Players cannot hear each other across the field. They rely on signals or posters/play cards on the sidelines, which is non-verbal communication. That happens to be my specialty having come from Gallaudet University. I actually see my hearing loss as an advantage in that aspect; crowd noise and trash talk does not faze me. It actually enables me to focus better on playing the game.“